Rumer

Rumer’s first show in two years will be the first chance to hear tracks from her forthcoming new album This Girl’s In Love: A Bacharach and David Songbook (released 21 October) which features some of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s most memorable co-compositions and sees Rumer – described as ‘the heir to Dusty Springfield and Karen Carpenter’ (Q Magazine) – bring her extensive experience and singular talent to bear on her most enticing undertaking to date.

“I couldn’t have made this album five years ago,” admits Rumer. “I think I’ve now got a wide enough emotional palette to draw on for these songs’ characters and stories. That kind of insight only comes as you get older.” Fittingly though, Rumer’s links to Burt Bacharach have been a longstanding constant throughout her recording career. In 2010 (the year her multi-platinum selling debut Seasons Of My Soul was released) Burt invited Rumer to his California home just to hear her sing. That same year saw the release of a special single, Rumer Sings Bacharach at Christmas. Another highlight saw Rumer sing for Barack Obama: in 2012 she performed at the White House singing A House Is Not A Home, as part of a tribute concert honouring the songwriting partnership.

What’s most fitting to This Girl’s In Love is the personal relationship between Rumer and Shirakbari. The pair married in 2015, after first meeting at a Dionne Warwick gala at the Royal Albert Hall where Rumer was to sing a duet of Bacharach & David’s Hasbrook Heights. With Shirakbari having worked for 25 years with Bacharach and 30 years with Dionne Warwick – serving as musical director to them both – this could even be deemed ‘a Bacharach romance’. And now, Rumer’s love of Bacharach & David has been captured on a lovingly assembled long-player, a project she attests is as much a homage to Hal David as it is to Bacharach. His words, capturing emotional crises with consummate simplicity, are key to the duo’s timeless compositions, and to Rumer and Shirakbari’s new take on them.

Interpreting a back catalogue already known the world over through versions sung by such accomplished vocalists as Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Karen Carpenter, Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey and, of course, Dionne Warwick was bound to be intimidating, to say the least. However, matched step for step by Shirakbari’s intuitive arrangements and focused orchestrations, Rumer has risen to the occasion magnificently. “There’s a timelessness to these songs,” she observes. “They will last forever.” This Girl’s In Love finds Rumer in possession of a record that rightfully deserves to be cherished alongside its namesake.